Those who know me, know these days I don’t really ride outside in June and July. In my youth I was all over the roads, rain, hail or shine, but now I prefer the safety and ease of indoor riding, especially after my one venture out for a July ride in 2021! July indoor training for me now is all about flicking on the tour highlights package and catching up on the drama of the overnight stage.
25years ago when I was working in an office for a living, I can remember leaving work at 5pm riding for an hour out to Outer Harbor racing back to the office just so I could flick on the 6pm SBS coverage and see Lance, Ullrich, Stewie and co. in action. Today with SBS On Demand it is so much easier for us to take our pick of whatever highlights package we have time to watch.
This year’s tour once again hasn’t failed to disappoint. The battle between the top two has been electric. Man on man for 21 days (well the first 14 anyway!) they have fought a battle royale. This is a test of all of sports elements -physical, tactical, technical, psychological and social.
The one thing I love about the trainer is that I am in control. I plug in my watts and just go harder or easier depending on how I am feeling. But not all watts are created equal. Power in cycling is made up the torque we put out (how much force our muscles produce) and cadence. The challenge is that peak toque usually occurs at the slowest cadence (in fact it is an isometric contraction which has zero cadence that produces the highest torque especially compared to a concentric contraction), but as max torque x zero means we are left with no power, finding the right balance between the two is vital.
When I grew up cycling all we had to ride with was a 53/39 front cog and a 11/23 rear cog (far different to Walt Van Aerts 56/43 and 33/10 he road the TT in. This meant that I became a grinder. These days I tend to ride most climbs out of the saddle for large blocks, producing lots of torque but I don’t have that high cadence that many of my training partners have. This means the steeper the climb where everyone has to ride at a low cadence, is where I thrive. So, when we train on the bike we need to look at ways to boost our torque and or cadence to boost power. For me this means winter is a chance to work on training my weakness- cadence.
There is a little bit of science around which shows that when time trialling the higher your power the higher your cadence needs to be to find the optimal sweet spot for economy (how much energy/oxygen we use). This is one reason why males tend to ride at a higher cadence than females in Ironman races. The body just find its optimal range.
When watching the tour, you can easily identify who will be next to pop off the back of the main bunch as they tend to ride out of the saddle trying to lift their power output by using their body weight to press down on the pedals. But the energy cost becomes even higher, and they soon blow. Yet it is totally different at the front. Pogacar very rarely gets out of the saddle (except when he needs to produce huge amounts of power to break free), while Vingegaard is almost always riding in the saddle, spinning away trying to latch back on.
So, when I am on the trainer watching the tour, I use this as a chance to work on my cadence. I don’t have to change watts I simply try to lift speed with cadence. When I first started to do this, I found my pedal stroke was a little clunky and the bike was making some funny noises, but after a couple of weeks of it, my pedal stroke is much smoother. I always try to focus on lifting my knee up over the handlebars and pulling across the bottom. The up and down part takes care of itself, but the challenge is to create nice smooth circles as you pedal. Sure, there will be a time for the torque development work over spring. But winter for me is about staying upright, enjoying my riding, working on a clear weakness and watching the tour. The challenge then will be to transition my indoor cadence work to the outdoors.